


Hear You Me

by orphan_account



Series: A Basketful of First-Times [7]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst and Feels, Breaking Celibacy Vows, Canonical Character Death, Complicated Relationships, First Time, Forbidden Love, Force Bond (Star Wars), Grief/Mourning, Jedi Code (Star Wars), Loss, M/M, Making Love, Master & Padawan Relationship(s), Memories, Mutual Masturbation, Mutual Pining, Non-Penetrative Sex, Obi-Wan Kenobi Needs a Hug, Personal Favorite, Prompt Fic, Retrospective, Sad, Self-Reflection, Sexual Tension, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-06
Updated: 2020-02-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:01:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22487569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Alone with his grief and the void of the shattered bond, Obi-Wan prepares Qui-Gon's body for his funeral, struggling to come to terms with all that's been wrested from him with the thrust of a crimson blade. A Jedi, after all, should have no secrets . . .And so the memories well up, glaring-sharp and sweet and bright.Or: "So what would you think of me now,So lucky, so strong, so proud?I never said 'Thank you' for that . . .Now I'll never have a chance."
Relationships: Qui-Gon Jinn/Obi-Wan Kenobi
Series: A Basketful of First-Times [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1876582
Comments: 8
Kudos: 25
Collections: Master Apprentice Archive





	Hear You Me

**Author's Note:**

> When I begged for prompts ~~(who am I kidding, I still do!)~~ , LuvEwan gave me:
>
>> "Obi-Wan is scared by the building sensation of orgasm and has not achieved it, even alone. Qui-Gon works carefully to change that." 
> 
> LuvEwan, thank you again, ever and always. I'm sorry it's not as "obvious" a prompt fill as some other stuff has been, but it came to mind and wouldn't go away, so . . .
> 
> Otherwise, not much else to tell. Strong inspiration for what Qui-Gon tells Obi-Wan to help convince him that an orgasm isn't a bad thing is taken from Judith Moffett's _Pennterra_ : “But it is not _important_! It is only _pleasure_! The pleasure stops. Everything important goes on without stopping.” (p. 134). This is a truly unique sci-fi novel about a Quaker colony on an alien world which delves deeply into relationships (especially sexual), morality, and how to live in right relations with one another. I highly recommend it.
> 
> The title and "Or" are from Jimmy Eat World's heart-wrenching ["Hear You Me"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcmFH5OvdtA):
> 
> "So what would you think of me now,  
> So lucky, so strong, so proud?  
> I never said 'Thank you' for that . . .  
> Now I'll never have a chance.
> 
> May angels lead you in.  
> Hear you me, my friends.  
> On sleepless roads the sleepless go.  
> May angels lead you in."
> 
> Thoughts and comments are ever and always appreciated; thank you so much for reading, and I do hope that you enjoy! <3
> 
> Oh, and I'm not sure I like how this turned out, so I may tweak it in the future or something . . . we'll see.

The room is cool: shadows long-drawn over marble halls, Naboo’s sun slipping orange-tainted through transparisteel windowpanes. Qui-Gon’s body lays amidst the shade, and Obi-Wan stands, for one last moment, in the light. Hands wrinkled from too long in a bowl of water, waiting, he wrings out a cloth, again and again, tunic-sleeves rolled up past his elbows. Droplets scatter with the tremors in his fingertips, splitting the light a thousand shades.

On a table are clothes his Master’s never worn before: a fresh tunic and trousers from the Temple, brought when Yoda and Mace Windu came. Beside them, scuffed and worn, are Qui-Gon’s belt, his lightsaber, his boots. Things so familiar that seem, suddenly, as if they belong to someone else entirely.

He looks at but does not register what meets his eyes—not fully; he’s seen much death, and far worse than this, but there’s something eerie about how it seems to be and yet be nothing like his Master. Flesh when all the life is gone is nothing but crude matter . . .

But Force, how he loved the man: the spirit and the flesh.

* * *

He doesn’t know where to begin. Or how.

Someone had come in the flurried preparatory, celebratory chaos—perhaps when he’d been sending a transmission to Coruscant—and done him unutterable kindness: had stripped the singed and sweat-soaked tunic, had slipped off soiled trousers, washed away the fluids and excrement and covered up his Master’s nakedness . . . Until all that Obi-Wan had found when he’d been led here was just this: the still and silent room, empty, but for a bowl of herb-sweet water and the body.

Which isn’t to say that death does not mark his Master—ah, not so—for he is pale as stone and those indigo eyes staring up at nothing, oh, they’re clouded, sunk well-deep, and so terribly lightless . . .

Obi-Wan begins, in the end, with the face: a finger wrapped in soaking cloth stroking softly at his brow, his cheekbones, the crooked nose, the bloodless lips. But he cannot look his Master in the eyes.

* * *

_The fever hasn’t broken for a week._

_Obi-Wan can feel Qui-Gon’s energy as a steady candle in the Force—flickering, dancing, laughing at the surety of the wick that will inevitably end._ But not yet, _Obi-Wan demands—flings the thought across the bond. <_Not yet.>

_He’s hardly slept or done anything at all that would take him from his Master’s side. The healers on this rain-logged world—swathed in deep-green robes and hurrying on soft-soled feet—have been kind, and unassuming, and brought him three full meals a day. Broth, too, for Qui-Gon; sometimes toasted bread. Water for drinking, water for bathing . . . a bedpan for the man too weak to stand, hovering at the edge of consciousness._

_But even in a situation such as this, Obi-Wan can sense naught nearly else but peace, tempered hollowly in weariness._

_The cloth is smooth as silk in his hands; in the water it reminds him, almost, of the texture of Bant’s skin. He wrings it, careful not to spill a drop—clean water here is precious—and begins to dab at Qui-Gon’s sweat-streaked brow. The room is dimly-lit, and small, and smells of sickness. His Master’s form seems far too large—and wasted, yet: the fever has wreaked havoc. It will take time indeed for him to recover his strength . . ._

_If he lives._

_So the healers said._

_This illness has claimed many thousands. There is no cure—not yet. Jocasta Nu has given Obi-Wan nothing from the Archives . . . whatever Qui-Gon battles must be his alone._

_At first Obi-Wan had set his jaw and tried to keep from smiling; a Jedi is but a mortal, yes—but what a powerful ally is the Force. And the Force dwells in everything—is present in both sickness and health. Qui-Gon will wake from a broken fever in the morning—so he’d thought. A planet’s turn, no more. But now—_

_Cool, cool water against the burning, sallow skin. Cool water beading down across swollen eyelids, half-clogged nostrils that draw slow and rattled breaths, sunken cheeks and chapped, pale lips that occasionally part to murmur glossolalia. Cool water running between Obi-Wan’s own fingers, despite his best efforts, dribbling onto the pillow or the pallet or the floor._

_Without thought, on an impulse as strong as if it were Force-given, he bows his head and presses his lips against his Master’s own, tastes stale breath and sweat and broth-salt._

<Master . . . please don’t die.>

 _A whisper through the Force, beyond a word—that soft, soft_ green _that’s Qui-Gon’s light—as good as a hand to hold his own, the fingers strong, pulse pounding out a counterrhythm to his own. The lips beneath his own curve briefly, trembling with all the strength his Master has, into a smile._

* * *

He cradles the hands next, not sure why, not thinking why, not caring: _rigor mortis_ has begun to set in and those strong, agile fingers have begun to curl, to become like gnarled branches . . . Absently he begins to rub at the joints, the knuckles, as if easing a morning’s aches—for Qui-Gon is not a young man—before it dawns on him that the flesh beneath his touch is cold, is cold, and not merely for the water.

* * *

_Today Qui-Gon holds his hands during their morning meditation._

_They sit, often, just so: knee-to-knee, with their hands rested with an easy grace, their palms upturned, upon their thighs—but today something, some boundary, some modicum of decorum, is crossed, and Qui-Gon’s hands slip beneath his own: warm, calloused, grasping—but oh-so-gently so._

_His Master’s . . . nearness . . . has always been something of a problem, nor one he’s readily understood. But now . . . now it stirs something he understands less even than that; without thinking, he makes as if to pull away, only to find himself riveted, unable. Reflexively Obi-Wan inhales, seeking Light, seeking sacred-cool waters to splash across his spirit, to will his body to submission. Heat sears across his cheeks as he realizes that, seated as they are, his body’s betrayal is all the more obvious. But oh, Force, it’s more than betrayal—than reflex—he can feel every muscle beginning to clench, can feel need and pleasure and agony mounting, speckled-brightness quickening behind his eyes—_

<There is no shame, my Padawan. Not in this. And yet you torment yourself.> _Qui-Gon’s thumbs follow the curves of his own, the tendons that quiver._ <Will you tell me why?>

<It is against the Code.> _The words are taut, strung far too tight; the motion of Qui-Gon’s touch, oh, his body can imagine it a thousand different places and Obi-Wan wants nothing more than to shrivel up within himself, to disappear. His Master_ must _feel his discomfort—if not for his body, then . . . He tries, and desperately, to keep his end of the bond nothing—utterly unreadable—nothing, nothing, nothing—and well enough he knows he fails beneath the older man’s intuition._

_Qui-Gon’s breath is a whisper at his cheek; convulsively he shudders, feels himself begin to seep through his trousers, feels his cock twitch with a motion that nearly catches his hips and—no—would catch the whole of him—_

Light. Just Light. The Force and Light and water, like Bant, like silver eyes, like salmon skin, like swimming in the cold waters of the Room of a Thousand Fountains and—

_But Bant knows his secret. At this shame wars with need: an equally impalpable, terrible ache that will devour him, one way or another._

_There is a moment’s pause, consideration, and then Qui-Gon squeezes his hands gently._ <Finding pleasure with oneself, within the living Force, is not forbidden by the Code. I would not deign to bring this to your attention, but I’ve seen how much your self-denial causes you to suffer.>

<No. You _don’t_.>

_The tension snapped. The heat of Qui-Gon’s hands in his, just holding him, nothing but compassion offered through the Force, and he’s so close and so warm and—oh—it will take little indeed to—_

_He doesn’t know. He cannot know. It will devour him. He’ll disappear._

_Furiously blinking hazed madness from his eyes—madness it must be, base lust, no more—Obi-Wan surges to his feet, wrenching his hands away with more strength than he intends, stumbling half-blindly to the ‘fresher, struggling against what seems like the inevitable—he will not, will not,_ will not _—_

_The sonic shower hums against his skin, does little to mask the precum trickling down his cock or to soothe the now-familiar ache that suffuses him—the root, the whole—or to wash away the tears that he can blink away no more than the speckled haze of self-control brought near to its breaking point._

_Would that it were cold, cold water—would that it were purifying Light._

* * *

Qui-Gon’s chest, his sides, his shoulders . . . Obi-Wan draws the cloth over the pallid skin, again, again, long-stroked soothing motions, wringing the water until only beaded moisture gleams and catches on the scars and trickles through the valleys—between muscles, ribs . . . the horrid mark left by a pirate’s vibroblade _en route_ to Bandomeer . . . He tells the stories of the scars as he traces them with somber fingertips. Most of them he knows.

Like a gravity well, the wound draws him: the edges neat, if charred, if blotted full of burnt blood and cauterized flesh and the spine barely, barely missed. He swallows, cannot look, cannot fathom it. If he glances away too long it pulls him back—a specter at the edges of his sight—the ugliness . . .

He will leave it so. Death, his life has taught him, is never beautiful, not even as one rejoices for those who are transformed into the Force.

He believes that, in his heart of hearts. He does.

But not quite now.

* * *

_He dreams often of Qui-Gon’s laughter. Or of a moan that shakes the whole of him. Both are deep, reverberating, resonating, are rolling thunder, are something gathered that seems too big for even his Master’s mountainous body to bear._

_He wants to wrap his arms around those broad-sprung ribs and bury his head against that barreled chest and feel the galaxy—the stars, the sky, the ground—tremble for his Master’s laughter—or—_

_He himself trembles, catches the current of his thoughts, firmly dams it with clenched fists and an absolute awareness of the situation—perilous._

_They’re pressed together in a single bunk aboard some overcrowded shuttle, plasteel biting-cold even through their robes, the air chill enough, almost, to leave his breath a fleeting-burst cloud at his lips. The other bunks are full of beings such as they—travelers, strangers even, clasped to one another for warmth, as if dear life. And perhaps for some of them it is._

_He and Qui-Gon had drifted into uneasy sleep pressed back-to-back, but now—of one accord—they slip to half-consciousness and ask quick-slung, gentle questions through the Force—no words—hardly even thoughts—but hopes, but longings, but truths of the body that they know are not the whole of it._

_And Qui-Gon’s shivering._

_And so he finds himself wrapping his arms about his Master’s ribs, tucking his head just beneath that bearded jaw, stray strands of hair tickling his nose. He can feel the beating of Qui-Gon’s heart, the slow inhalation of his breath, the tremors through his body that slowly, slowly dissipate. Warmth, and nearness, and a low hum of gratitude rising to rumble through his Master’s chest._

_Into the dark-robed shoulder, he can’t help but crack a smile._

_Even as he feels the telltale heat begin to gather in his belly, the tautness at his groin, the tightness of his trousers and the hyper-keen awareness of the length of his cock pressed against his Master’s thigh—the faintest currents of promised friction if he but cracks, but loses himself, but lets go, lets go, oh, Force—_

_Even as he feels—unmistakably—Qui-Gon’s own erection: hard and hot through cloth that seems entirely too thin, twitching sharply, weeping._

_They are still. They do not speak—not of that, nor of the growing, keen-edged need._

_Nor do they let go._

* * *

Gently he pulls Qui-Gon’s hair from beneath his shoulders, delicate despite himself, delicate despite the fact that there’s no need. All the years he’s longed for this—to tangle his fingers in tresses grown, over the years, far more silver than they’d once been, all copper-bronze and gleaming. It’s stiff with sweat at the roots, and he cups water in his hands, carding through the tangles, worrying the knots.

* * *

_In public, they must seem austere and aloof with each other, to the strangers who gaze upon them with awe or trepidation and are so sure that the eye is the only way to_ see _._

_But there is the Force, the bond: little secrets they owe no one._

_And moments such as this:_

_Qui-Gon’s hand plaiting his braid every morning. So it’s been for the past few years, gathering gravity, a somber ritual no less so than meditation or their daily_ katas _. And it’s become more than that—more than deft fingers working strands of hair grown ever-longer, inch by inch:_

_But also the same hand slipped against his head, as if to cradle him, to tousle the queue with affection._

_And Obi-Wan’s own hand reaching out in kind—just once—parting tresses thick and soft as silk at his Master’s temple, weaving a Padawan’s braid._

_This, too, earns him that most treasured thing: the resonant basso laughter, rumbling from Qui-Gon’s chest. A touch pressed against his cheek for so, so brief a moment that he blinks and it’s gone._

<A Master is, truly, an apprentice to his Padawan.> _A moment’s pause, and Qui-Gon stares into the rising ruddy suns, twin flames in a peach-streaked sky._ <If I have ever grown so arrogant as to forget that . . . if I forget it still . . . Obi-Wan, forgive me. Tell me. Please.>

_Obi-Wan ducks his head, says nothing, the feel of Qui-Gon’s touch still burning there against his cheek._

* * *

The legs are like a sculptor’s masterpiece, cold, smooth and hard as stone but for soft hair . . . Eventually Obi-Wan’s washing brings him to his Master’s thighs, to the thicket at his groin, to the cock and the scrotum. He closes his eyes, dares not look, no, it would be insolent, discourteous. Somehow. He isn’t sure. Something akin to how he cannot look Qui-Gon in the eyes. Not now, when there’s no quickened thrumming life or Light.

But still, but still, he’s gentle there, and yet even still it seems like sacrilege.

He considers, for a moment, what Qui-Gon would say to that—

A knot forms in his throat, burning, tearing-screaming, tears snaring at his eyes that he can’t blink away because to open them would be to look—or to look away—and _that_ —

In the end he lets the tears fall, mingled with the water.

* * *

<You’re afraid. That’s what I didn’t understand before . . . >

_Night. A warm Coruscanti night, the windows flung wide, the incessant strains of sky-traffic whining and growling and half-muffled for distance only, the gaudy neon glare from the never-sleeping city-world not quite enough to break the near-darkness of the quarters. But enough._

_Obi-Wan tries not to look, tries not to see that Qui-Gon is erect, precum glistened-beading at the tip of his cock flushed deep, wrapped in half-retracted velvet foreskin. But he cannot look away, for even with closed eyes the sight, the glance given already, haunts him. And the Force sings to him now, slurries through his blood, piqued-laughing exultation: Qui-Gon’s presence is an anchor, soft-green as an uncurled leaf striving towards the sun—but_ striving _, still: but_ needing _._

_As so many years before, Qui-Gon’s hands are slipped beneath his own. Knee-to-knee, they sit. Soft-wafted breath across his cheek._

_But the question is refocused: the heart of it, the truth of it, refined over the years and all these miniscule indeterminate gestures summed, until he knows that Qui-Gon knows it and there’s nowhere, now, to hide._

_Yes—he is afraid._

<Why?>

_Gentle, the asking: gentle the fingers that curl to stroke his wrists in tandem with the pulse, but tenderly, as if to soothe him so. He bows his head, every muscle in his body taut not merely for the touch but for the tension strung between his head and heart. To spill the truth of it to Qui-Gon . . . or to spill something else entirely . . . one is but a betrayal of himself. The other—everything he is, and everything beyond himself: everything he knows as dear and true . . . But which is which, he isn’t sure._

<Are you afraid of the pleasure? Do you think touching yourself will be the same as breaking your vows? As laying with another?>

_“I don’t know.” A whisper, rough. He dares not touch the bond: it will consume him. Qui-Gon is too bright . . . “It will devour me, Master.”_

_“Hm.” Drawn low, the sound, a hum, as if the beginning to a melody. “The pleasure might, for a moment. You might find yourself beyond your body. Might feel that you are nothing but the Force—but energy, but Light. That’s true. Perhaps that_ is _being devoured, in a sense . . . But are we not already vessels for the Force? Do we not empty ourselves to hear it, to obey? Is Light, is energy, not what we will become, in the end?_

_“Besides . . . “ A pause, strung not merely to the pulse of blood in his veins but Qui-Gon’s, too—he can feel the counterrhythm to his heart in those broad, warm hands. Can see, if he dares a glance, the cadenced flexing of the muscles in his Master’s thighs, his hips—as if he, too, can only bear so much and—_

_A string of precum drips down Qui-Gon’s cock. The hands beneath his own tighten. When next he speaks the words are urgent, hoarse—but not unkind—but not the words of a Fallen Jedi—no, Qui-Gon will not lead him into Darkness—_

_“Obi-Wan, the pleasure is a_ moment _. Nothing more._ You _remain. You_ will _remain, always. Everything_ important _will remain. None of that is changed, not for a moment’s pleasure at your hand.”_

_“But I—but alone . . . it’s . . . not how it should be . . . ” Obi-Wan shakes his head, forsaking words, reaching at last for the Force, for the bond, for the brightness. He returns the strength of Qui-Gon’s grip, pours the agony, the need, the fear: pours the truth, the heart-depth, sacrilegious twisting of the sacred song—their vows, the Code—_

I love. I love. I love.

You _, he means._ You _he cannot say._

_And yet—_

_“Hush, now. Peace, now. It will be well. I promise you.” A finger at his lips, shaking. Qui-Gon’s breathing short and sharp._

_A whimper shivers up his throat, a shudder wracking him from head to toe. Obi-Wan blinks, speckled galaxies stealing across the half-lit Coruscanti night. His heart pounds a heavy beat, but oh, his body is light, and_ he _is Light, and—_

_Coarse fabric, plush mattress underneath: his sleep-couch. Qui-Gon supine beside him, steady, sure: the weight of him, the unmistakable presence, the inexorable green of growing-life. The Force seems palpable, thick in the air, thick in the smell of his Master’s body and tangled in silver-copper tresses, hair caught between his fingers, the heat of Qui-Gon’s cock against his thigh, keening._

_Instinctively he reaches out, splays his hands against his Master’s shoulders. Cards through the hair on his chest, and down, curling at the curve of his hips. He has touched these places before. Touching them again does not break the Code, even if the circumstances are . . ._

_Qui-Gon’s eyes meet his, heavy-lidded, embers kindled flame—but a nod—no more—unspoken: they are not lovers. There are places even they dare not to tread, words they dare not speak of, flesh they dare not touch. No matter how badly both want it . . . and Obi-Wan can tell from the mounting tension in his Master’s frame that what the older man wants most—what he, himself, wants most—is to feel the younger man’s hand wrapped around his cock and—_

_Obi-Wan wants more even than that. Wants to scatter kisses. Wants to hold Qui-Gon in his arms and move and feel Qui-Gon beneath him, moving, too—slipped-grinding thrusting friction—and wants to lose the rhythm and forget, for a moment, that they are Jedi._

_But_ that _—that is his other fear._ Would _he?_

_Surely they cannot._

_And so he offers to the man he loves the only thing he knows, the closest they might come:_

<Show me that I will not lose myself. Or you.>

_“Yes—”_

_Qui-Gon’s hand tangles in his own, briefly, still grasping white-knuckled at the larger man’s hips, before grasping his cock. In the semi-glow Obi-Wan can see the motions, the shadows betraying a shuddering, instinctive thrust, the surge of the body, the word lost in a cry. Slick, the foreskin sliding back across the head: the strokes are short, swift, gentle—almost teasing—until within what seem like hours and seconds alike Qui-Gon’s fist slips from root to tip—once, twice, again—savage, almost—graceless, almost, if anything of Qui-Gon could be but grace—and it takes Obi-Wan a moment to register the tacky heat jetted in fitful, frantic spurts across his chest—takes a moment longer still to feel the reverberations of his Master’s cries, thrice-struck, begin to settle somewhere deep within his own ribs, as if an echo._

_And then indigo eyes meet his again, something irrevocably different, all shattered-bright. The fingers he’s dug into the flesh of Qui-Gon’s hips are loosened, clasped, caressed. He hardly realizes that the whimpers at his throat have caught and become need-song. That the whole of him quivers. That quietly Qui-Gon’s hands have led him to his cock and laid him there and left him, skin an inch from skin. The last step must be his alone._

<You will not be devoured. That I promise you.>

_And his left hand held tightly, oh, his anchor. For once the bond of flesh and blood more than the Force, because the Force bursts behind his eyes and flares throughout the whole of him and Obi-Wan knows now that only with his Master can he ever hope to—_

<Stop thinking, Obi-Wan. Just feel. What have you to fear now? Here I am . . . >

_A subtle nudge, no more: through the bond the recollection of Qui-Gon’s orgasm—the clarion bells of his cries—the heat of his cum—_

_He has not been devoured. He has not disappeared._

_And slowly Obi-Wan traces a finger there against his cock, the mapping the veins, pleasure burning as sparks through his body at the slightest touch, the fleeting promise, begging more—tight warm friction—_ oh _—_

_At first he tries to touch himself as Qui-Gon did—fluttering whispers, the slipping of his foreskin over the head of his cock and back again—and his eyes half-roll into his head and he doesn’t remember, exactly, what it is to breathe—_

_But then he realizes that to stroke the shaft alone is something_ deep _, something profound, more than quick-stricken pleasure—it will build and build upon itself, slowly—might grant him, in the end, a gentler rapture._

_His hand finds a subtle rhythm near the base, his hips rocking with feather-light precision, an echo in kind of the same short, soft undulations with which Qui-Gon moved—_

_“Oh, Force—_ Master _—”_

_“I’m right here.”_

_The hand holding his is shaking. Through the sleep-couch he can feel Qui-Gon’s body beginning to shift, catching the rhythm again, catching his stiffened cock right-handed, his breath snapped to a harsh staccato, the bond full of sweet-nothings that mean everything. Unspoken, as all the rest, that they do this to each other. Qui-Gon is not a young man any more, but for this, ah, his body remembers its youth, its Code-bound virility._

_Obi-Wan throws back his head, moans cracked across his throat like cries of agony—perhaps it’s so—_

_After all, this is the point of no return. Too many times he’s been here, only just able to control himself. It has ended, always, only, in a burning, heavy ache that would have him clutching at his genitals if he weren’t so wary of the friction. That would follow him for days and threaten from the shadows, from moments when he’d but let slip his guard._

_But now—_

_Qui-Gon’s hand in his and_

_Qui-Gon’s love-cries that sound like “Yes” and “Please” and_

_Qui-Gon through the bond, bursting green-struck love-Light, luminous, and_

stroking him through the Force

_Energy-scattered radiance and_

_The reality of flesh, oh, the body of the man he loves, tense, quaking as he cums a second time—surely, so, it must be well, it must be good—_

_He can never be afraid with Qui-Gon at his side_

_and so_

_Frenetically his hips buck into his hand, straining, seeking, thrusting and thrusting with no rhythm whatsoever now, no self-control—oh—all cracked cadence, all twitching cock and cry unbroken and endless-seeming spurted cum and oh, Force,_ yes _—all friction-surged heat and tempo-seared Light._

* * *

Darkness falls.

The deep-lavender shadows that had trestled the polished-stone floor have broadened and bled and grown black. Obi-Wan is glad.

He has dressed Qui-Gon in the clothes that may as well belong to a stranger: they’re too neat, too stiff, too clean. He had always wanted to straighten his Master’s tunic, forever in a state of disarray. But now what he wouldn’t give for familiarity—disheveled, worn, lived-in. Always half-hanging from his Master’s mountainous frame, hidden by his robe.

He cradles Qui-Gon’s lightsaber in his hands a moment, shivering as he remembers the feel of the hilt leaping to his palm. There had been, of course, no resistance when he’d struck with _sai tok_ against the Zabrak Sith—but in memory the strike is heavy: a desecration of the blade.

By tradition, the weapon could be his.

But he can’t bear it so. He could not look upon the verdant blade and see aught else but Qui-Gon.

No. It isn’t his.

Carefully he hooks it onto his Master’s belt.

He casts his gaze around the room, eyes adjusted to the darkness, realizing there’s nothing left to do. As he dries his hands he realizes that a tempered ache has settled in his groin, the memories reminding him that he is, still, mortal flesh and blood. That his heart beats, still. That though he is a vessel of the Force, _a priori_ Jedi Knight . . . he is alive. He is a man. And he has lost the man he loves. What was, once, will never be again. Not that he’d hoped—

But he _had_ hoped.

He considers, for a moment, how Qui-Gon might counsel him, beyond the fate thrust upon his shoulders.

Ah. To go on living, and to want more life.

Tonight, then, he tells himself: tonight when the embers are ash and all are asleep, he will take himself in hand and ease the ache one final time, just as his Master taught.

But now—

Faintly, if he strains, he can hear footsteps. Can feel the swelling energy of the beings, mourning-laden, gathering. Among them, yes, the boy: the boy who has lost a mother and . . . a father, a savior, a lightbringer. Ah . . . all within so short a time. The boy who perhaps won the war. The boy on whom rests the fate of all the galaxy. Somehow. Someway. Obi-Wan doesn’t see it—but Qui-Gon was so sure he did. And he believes in Qui-Gon. Now it’s not enough, but someday it _will_ be—of that much Obi-Wan is sure.

Bracing himself, he gathers the body in his arms, bearing the weight more than his own, the weight that seems such a strange quantity by which to measure the life it bore. Qui-Gon was more than that—more than mere flesh—but not all Light. He feels the Force flowing through him—cool waters and warm Light—lending spent muscles new strength; and with steady step and head held high and none to know what happened here, he bears his Master to the waiting pyre.

**Author's Note:**

> **First-time prompts? Spare some prompts, friend?**
> 
> ~ and / or ~
> 
> Is anyone up for a story exchange? Like an art trade, I guess, but . . .  with . . . stories?


End file.
